Instructor recommended books

Good Books for ESL Students.
The following books are recommendations by De Anza instructors as good books for ESL students, or anyone for that matter. They are loosely arranged into levels according to difficulty. Many of the authors below have written other books that you might enjoy as well.

Intermediate/ Low Advanced - ESL 252 and 262.

Ahmedi, Farah. The Story of My Life: An Afgan Girl on the Other Side of the Sky
Albom, Mitch. Tuesdays with Morrie (non-fiction)
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (autobiography)
Angelou, Maya. The Heart of a Woman
Armstrong, William. Sounder
Asimov, Isaac. Earth is Room Enough (science fiction)
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale (fiction)
Behr, Edward and Mark Steyn. The Story of Miss Saigon
Buck, Perl. The Good Earth
Burroughs, Augusten. Dry (memoir)
Clarke, Arthur C. 2001: A Space Odyssey (science fiction)
Divakaruni, Chitra. The Mistress of Spices
Dumas, Firoozeh. Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America (biography)
Frank, Anne. The Diary of Anne Frank
Frost, Robert. The Poetry of Robert Frost
Gibson, William. Neuromancer (science fiction)
Gray, John. Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus
Grier, Rosy. All-American Heroes
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter
Hemingway, Ernest. The Old Man and the Sea
Hosseini, Khaled. The Kite Runner
Houston, Jean Wakatsuki. Farewell to Manzanar
Hwang, David Henry. M Butterfly (fiction)
Iwasaki, Minek. Geisha, A Life (biography, prose somewhat weak, but strong content)
Jimenez, Francisco. The Circuit: Life of a Migrant Child
Kamio, Yoko. Boys Over Flowers [Hana Yori Dango] (fiction comic about a high school in Japan)
Kinkaid, Annie. John
Kisinski, Jerry. Being There (fiction)
Kozol, J. Death at an Early Age
Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of Maladies
London, Jack. The Call of the Wild (fiction)
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. Of Love and Other Demons (magical realism)
McBride, James. The Color of Water
McCunn, Ruthanne Lum. Thousand Pieces of Gold
Momaday, Scott. The Way to Rainy Mountain
Montgomery, L. M.. Anne of Green Gables (fiction)
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye (fiction)
O'Dell, Scott. The Island of the Blue Dolphins (fiction)
Okada, John. No No Boy (fiction)
Pham, Andrew X. Catfish and Mandala (Pham's a San Jose resident)
Reed, Ishmael. Writin' is Fightin'
Richter, Conrad. The Light in the Forest (fiction)
Smiley, Jane. A Thousand Acres (fiction)
Spiegelman, Art. Maus (non-fiction comic about a survivor's tale of Hitler's Europe)
Steinbeck, John. Travels with Charlie (non-fiction)
Steinbeck. Of Mice and Men
Steinbeck. The Pearl
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club
Tannen, Deborah. You Just Don't Understand
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple (fiction)
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass
Yamamoto, Hisaye and King-Kok Cheung. Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories
Yep. The Starfisher


Advanced - ESL 172 and up.

Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451 (science fiction)
Bulosan, Carlos. America is in the Heart: a Personal History
DeParle, Jason. American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare (non-fiction)
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (non-fiction)
Dick, Philip K. Blade Runner: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (science fiction)
Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. Arranged Marriage
Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee. The Mistress of Spices (fiction)
DuBus III, Andre. House of Sand and Fog
Edrich, Louise. Love Medicine
Gaines, Ernest. A Lesson Before Dying
Gibson, William. Neuromancer (science fiction)
Golden, Arthur. Memoirs of a Geisha (fiction)
Griffen, John. Black Like Me (nonfiction/essays)
Guterson, David. Snow Falling On Cedars (fiction)
Ha, Jin. Waiting
Hagedorn, Jessica. Dogeaters
Haing, Ngor and Roger Warner. Survival in the Killing Fields
Hayslip, LeLy. Child of War, Woman of Peace
Heller, Joseph. Catch-22 (fiction)
Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God (fiction)
Jen, Gish. Typical American
Kidd, Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Fifth Book of Peace
Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior
Kolata, Gina. Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandenmic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It (non-fiction)
Kyl, Aung San Suu. Freedom from Fear and Other Writings
Larson, Peter and Kristen Donnan. Rex Appeal: The Amazing Story of Sue, the Dinosaur That Changed Science, the Law, and My Life (non-fiction)
Lee, Chang-Rae. Native Speaker
Lee, Li-Young. City in which I Love You: Poems (American Poets Continuum, no. 20)
Lee, Li-Young. The Winged Seeds (poetry)
Maguire, Gregory. Wicked (fiction)
Mason, Daniel. The Piano Tuner (fiction)
McCourt, Frank. Angela's Ashes (memoir)
Minatoya, Lydia. Talking to High Monks in the Snow
Minatoya, Lydia. The Strangeness of Beauty
Mirikitani, Janice. Shedding Silence (poetry)
Mukerjee, Bharati. Jasmine
Nie, Hualing. Mulberry and Peach: Two Women of China
Ondaatje, Michael. Anil's Ghost (fiction)
Ozeki, Ruth L. All Over Creation
Ozeki, Ruth L. My Year of Meats
Quindlen, Anna. Blessings
Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things
Sebold, Alice. The Lovely Bones
Sedaris, David. Me Talk Pretty One Day (essays)
Sidhwa, Bapsi. Cracking India (fiction)
Sijie, Dai. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Song, Cathy. Frameless Windows: Squares of Light (poetry)
Song, Cathy. Picture Pride (poetry)
Stephensen, Neal. Zodiac (science fiction)
Tan, Amy. The Joy Luck Club (fiction)
Tsukiyama, Gail. Dreaming Water
Tsukiyama, Gail. The Samuri's Garden (fiction)
Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-five (science fiction)
Wong, Shawn. Homebase


High Advanced - ESL 6 and up.
Books may fall into this category because of length, complexity of ideas or sentence structure, high-level vocabulary, or use of slang.

Lee, Gus. China Boy (fiction)
O'Brian, Tim. Going After Cacciato (fiction)
Robinson, Kim Stanley. Red Mars (science fiction)
Seth, Vikram. A Suitable Boy (fiction)
Shlain, Leonard. Sex, Time and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution (non-fiction)
Smiley, Jane. A Thousand Acres (fiction)
Smiley, Jane. The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton: A Novel (fiction)
Yalom, Marilyn. A History of the Wife (non-fiction)


Find more books at:.
http://www.ala.org/ala/yalsa/booklistsawards/booklistsbook.htm
Go to various American Library Association sites from there

Contributors.
Anne Thistlethwaite (ESL)
Bill Turner (Reading)
Clara Lam (ESL)
Gloria Heistein (ESL)
Gretchen Himes (ESL)
Iris Thot-Johnson (ESL)
Iva Tracey (ESL)
Julie Madigan (ESL)
Letty Wong (ESL)
Michele DuBarry (ESL)
Miki Melton (ESL Teaching Assistant)